


Frisson

by peresphone



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies)
Genre: A Near-Pornographic Love for Adjectives, AU, Age of Sail indulgence, F/M, Feelings and shit, I Would Die For Will Himbo Turner So Don't Try Any Shit, Philosophy Porn, Polysyndeton Addict, gratuitous description, post-AWE, sparrabeth, this fic could not sound more pretentious if i tried
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:21:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22536166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peresphone/pseuds/peresphone
Summary: He didn’t want her. Really, he didn’t, or at least not badly enough to fuck up his compass for a second time.
Relationships: Elizabeth Swann/Will Turner, Jack Sparrow/Elizabeth Swann
Comments: 9
Kudos: 62





	1. DIONYSUS

**Author's Note:**

> Post-AWE AU, totally throws out everything following the “original” trilogy (I cannot abide by a Pirates narrative sans Elizabeth Swan) because I haven’t seen movies 4-? (Are there five or six altogether? Jesus Christ). Well, I’ve watched the end credit scene of Elizabeth and Will lying in bed together on YouTube about seven times, but that’s it. Basically, Will’s off on his little Choose Your Own Adventure, Elizabeth has returned to the Pearl after a short while on her own, and Jack is seeking immortality. This is my incredibly self-indulgent exploration of the time between the end of AWE and Elizabeth and Will’s first reunion. 
> 
> I'll be returning to this fic as the desire strikes, but at the moment I don't see this being a regularly updated and starkly chaptered fic. That said, the predictions I make usually end up being entirely wrong, so who knows?

**•**

**FRISSON**

**•**

He didn’t want her. Really, he didn’t, or at least not badly enough to fuck up his compass for a second time. 

When he had told her before God (and her father, and far too many soldiers, and what was either two or zero of her fiancés) that things never would have worked out between them, Jack had meant it. True, he had expected to leave her and her man there in Port Royal ’til death did him part, leave her to resume her polished life, and had she done so Jack would be no liar. He never thought to see her again, least of all like this, in pirate rags with a figurative crown on her pretty head and a hard light in her eyes. 

A crown he himself had placed, no less, because there was no one it suited better, and because putting the Brethren Court at her mercy amused him greatly. No, Jack supposed he saw little of Miss Elizabeth Swann, but Lizzie Turner was another matter. He saw all too much of her now that she was aboard the _Pearl,_ and his bloody compass wouldn’t point him anywhere else.

Elizabeth was as bright as a torch and twice as likely to burn, but Jack had always been drawn to fire. He liked the way it glinted off gold, and she had the same shine. ’Twas true that she was groomed as any governor’s daughter, but his Lizzie-girl got a taste of pirate life young, and that bears either a fright or a craving no amount of frills or finishing can wipe clean. 

Piracy took to her like flame to tinder. Elizabeth craved it, chased it, prayed to it day and night. It festered in her like a disease, like a miracle, until the day she succumbed to the sea. The girl Jack had dragged up from the bottom of the ocean was different from the one who fell in, a corpse reanimated the moment he held up her coin. 

A pretty bauble, that. The world had warped and flexed around him upon touching the cursed gold, and it wasn’t until later, in the pale comfort of his prison cell, that Jack allowed himself to consider the strangeness of it all. Port Royal was meant to be an inconsequential stop along his blind path to freedom, a stop where he could eat and fuck and acquire a ship so that he could finally get back to the real journey. Yet there he was holding the map he so desperately needed in his arms, warm and wet and pretty as could be. A godsend, if you bought into that. 

And yes, she was pretty as could be, pretty until his fingers were on that coin and the veil tore. Jack looked at her and she back at him and they both knew: _I am in like company_. How she morphed, then, from mermaid to siren, angel to harpy. It was just a flash before she resumed her role, and as Elizabeth argued for his life Jack thought, _There’s an easier way._ Proved himself right about her, too; Lizzie’s eyes smoked as she squired for him with iron around her neck, but the bitterness was without fear. Like company, indeed. She was jealous, his spitfire savior, because he got to return to the waves and she didn’t. 

_Despicable_ , she named him.

_Pirate_ , he answered later.

Elizabeth was a lady. Lizzie was a pirate. Lizzie tasted like salt and he never left her side feeling steady. She teased him, screamed at him, laughed with him, drank with him. She’d kissed him once. She’d killed him once, too. And now she was a ruthless captain, nay, _king_ , a pirate any other would be proud to crew for. She knew how to balance impeccable self-control with a dose of lunacy that kept Jack on his toes with a hand on his pistol.

And now she had an heir to her crown. They hadn’t discussed any of it, but Jack knew that the Turners finally got around to a wedding night of sorts, as evidenced when Elizabeth popped out a miniature whelp not long after rejoining Jack’s crew. The kid was about a year old now, knew nothing but open ocean. 

Having a child aboard a pirate ship was a peculiarity that had initially made Gibbs apoplectic, but it wasn’t an issue. Elizabeth was a frighteningly capable woman, and the crew had been indulgent with the babe to the point of scandal. Jack called him Peanut. They would none of them be able to call themselves pirates if their loot hadn’t been so abundant as of late, and so bloodily won.

Despite his relative contentment, Jack often drifted to sleep with a nightmare overpowering his dreams. _Do you fear death?_ Will asks his boy, blue and drowned in the arms of its bloody mother, as Jack and the crew stand on the deck of the _Dutchman_ awaiting judgement. 

Those are the nights Jack wakes choking on tentacles that aren’t really there, the nights he prowls the _Pearl_ with sooty eyes until the sun is up. They’d become more frequent as the search for _la_ _agua de vida_ continued, a search that seemed doomed to continue if he couldn’t sort out his compass.

As a general rule, Jack tried not to think about anything that caused him discomfort so long as it wasn’t an immediate danger, but tonight the sea was quiet and the crew tired. He was alone in his cabin, amusing himself with a bottle of what was most likely rum but may have been poison. It made everything loose and warm and contemplative, and as he drank he remembered a night on an island with a girl in a slip and a fire in her eyes. 

He desperately wanted to live. God help him, Jack Sparrow was a creature made for life, made to draw every drop of blood he could from it. He didn’t think he could survive her, had in fact already died once by her hand, and he didn’t see why things would be any different a second time around. There was too much gunpowder set to blow. 

A knock, firm but reserved. A shape behind the glass, Jack dropping his head with a groan because if Gibbs made another attempt at getting a raise in his share of the _Pearl’s_ loot he was going to tie him to the crow’s nest and leave him there for a few days, goddammit—

“Jack?”

Not Gibbs. 

_This is terrible_ , Jack thought, but he was grinning. 

He was opening the door before his soggy brain could give him pause, and there she stood, alone against a backdrop of stars and sea. _Glorious_ , Jack thought.

“ _Miss_ Swan. You’re late!” For what, Jack couldn’t say, but Elizabeth didn’t seem inclined to ask for clarification. Under the moonlight her skin took on a silvery cast, and her eyelashes were sun-bleached, he noticed, her hair streaked a towheaded blonde, and she was looking at him in total bewilderment. 

He dimly realized that she’d been speaking while he stared at her, and seemed to be waiting for a response.

“ _Late_ , Miss Swan, and I don’t want to hear a word of excuse from you,” Jack continued, ignoring whatever it was she had said. He invited her in with a mocking sweep of his arm. Elizabeth didn’t even blink, just stepped in and crossed over to the far wall. 

She leaned against it, arms crossed and face tight, and Jack was once again caught up in her refraction. This time she was under torchlight rather than moonlight, and he felt closer to hell than heaven. 

“You’re drunk,” Elizabeth said, and Jack nodded his head in earnest, locking the door before retracing his steps back to the bottle of what was most likely rum. He found it on the floor beside his cot, gave a jovial _Aha!_ and fell back onto the bed with the cork between his teeth.

“Right you are, darling, and set to get drunker yet.” He yanked out the cork and took a slug before holding the bottle out towards Elizabeth, who stared at him for a moment before accepting. She took a deep pull, wiped her mouth with her sleeve, gave Jack a hard look, then drank again, repeating the process until the bottle was empty and her cheeks were flushed. 

_All we need now is a bonfire and white sand,_ Jack thought, and then, _unless she intends to cuff me to the mast again._ He sat himself up and made an effort to focus. Focusing felt very important at the moment, and he thought that if he could just get Lizzie’s face to keep from doubling he would be able to hold the important thing in his palm and study it. 

“What can I do for you tonight, Mrs. Turner, besides allow you to drink all of my rum without so much as a please or thank you?” 

She scoffed, but Jack thought there was a smile tugging at her lips. It fell almost immediately.

“I’m losing my mind,” she murmured. “And as you’ve never quite regained yours, I’m…I’m here for your insight.”

Jack could’ve crowed on about the honorable Miss Swan asking for _his_ insight ’til kingdom come, but tonight he’d leave it alone.

“On what topic can I illuminate you, Mrs. Turner?”

She looked away, recrossing her arms with a deep sigh.

“You can tell me,” she said, gaze fixed on the door, “how I’m supposed to do this.”

“Do what, exactly?” Jack asked,sharpening slightly in response to the dead weight in his stomach.

“Do _this_. Be a pirate, be a mother, sit around waiting for Will, I—I didn’t—” Elizabeth’s voice broke, and she took a deep breath before expelling the rest in a painful rush. Jack swallowed dryly, waited. 

“I’m doing it wrong, I must be, because nothing makes any sense, nothing makes _sense_ —”

“Elizabeth—”

“Jack. I just—I love him. I love him so much, a-and I _miss_ him, so badly that sometimes—” she gasped, came up for air, dove back in, “sometimes I want to jump overboard so he can catch me.”

Chills came over him— _Do you fear death?_ —and with that, Elizabeth dropped her head into her hands and wept. 

“Don’t, Lizzie, don’t do that,” Jack said, and then he was on his feet in the spinning room with his arms around her shoulders and she was leaning into him sweet and warm and she smelled like sweat and sea and he wanted her. He had been wrong. He wanted her badly. 

“Don’t do that,” he whispered, one palm holding her head to his chest, the other stroking her back. Elizabeth shuddered out a sob. She clung to him like it would save her, her hands fisting in his shirt, pulling him close until there was no space left. Jack could almost swear they were gusting away from the _Dutchman_ with that ripped bit of sail, Elizabeth crying into his chest but holding on by herself, strong and fearless in the face of glory. 

He had seen her with her world shattered, and even then she hadn’t been like this. This was worse, far worse. The naked vulnerability being laid out before him terrified Jack the most. To be so soft; it was the kind of trust that got a pirate killed every time, the kind of trust he’d had in Barbossa, the kind of trust he’d had in her. 

Once a man is doubly betrayed he learns and learns well to trust none but the stars, his own head, and luck, and this weakness alarmed him as much as it brought him to heel. She had him. He would never be able to walk away from this. 

“That’s not the worst of it,” Elizabeth whispered, her breath ghosting over his chest. Jack tightened his hold, dropped his head to her shoulder, face in her neck, lips brushing her pulse. It was the rum, he knew distantly, that was blurring their usual lines, but it didn’t feel that way. This was as natural as rain. She sighed in contentment and Jack thought, _Lovely._

“Then what is?” 

“Will is a part of me. That will always be true.”

He hummed in her ear, waited.

“But, Jack…I’m so _happy.”_

Elizabeth’s voice broke. Jack went still as stone, every bit of him straining to hope, to hope, to hope, and no, he would not survive losing this bet but Jack had faced far worse odds—

“Why?” he rasped, hand in her hair and _pulling_ now, softly, just to expose her neck to his bite like the vampire he was, and a whine slipped from her throat _._ With what was almost a snarl he had her flat against the wall, trapped between his ship and his embrace, waiting—

“Because,” she said, hands sliding up his chest, hips listing against his own, “I’m on my own now, truly. Truly and finally _._ ”

Tender as a good man, Jack kissed a path from her pulse to her jaw, her jaw to her temple, her eyelids, either cheek, softer than breath.

“Freedom, Lizzie?” Jack’s lips hovered over hers, and it was like they were suspended against black sky. The dice fell. “Have you found it?”

“ _Yes_ ,” Elizabeth hissed, and it was done. 

Open mouths and a leg hooked over Jack’s hip, her moan in his ear, his worship in hers, and she was the filthiest angel he ever met but by far the most beautiful.  She had already learned him, somehow, showed him how closely she paid attention, and he kept up as best he could. 

By the time their blood had cooled and they were asleep in his bed, tangled and sticky and satisfied, the sun had begun to rise. 

The echo of green like a shout in the sky, and the world flipped itself back over.


	2. HEPHAESTUS

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello hello! Thanks to all the lovely folks who've been reading and reviewing, it's so sweet and gratifying to know that you're enjoying the story!!! 
> 
> How are you all holding up through this lovely pandemic? I've just about completely lost my mind, which is to say I'm thriving as a socially restricted hermit.
> 
> Keeping things short and sweet while we dive into Will's POV. No mention of Sparrabeth--what Will doesn't know won't hurt him, right? But don't worry--Elizabeth's chapter is next, and it's gonna be a doozy.

**•**

**FRISSON**

**•**

He saw it all in shards. 

**•**

Rich beaded fabric, a wedding dress dragging in the mud beneath the weight of rain. The wet iron bars of his cell, hands clenched around them, knuckles bloodied, dirt beneath his nails. There were scars new and old, silver and gold, burns from the heat of the forge. 

He scanned them, curious, as Elizabeth fought her way to him. Home. Her breath in his face and her hands on his, just as cold and nearly as callused. The vitriol of a woman too-often denied would be a fire to keep him warm; the calm of a man well-acquainted with lawlessness would be a whetstone to keep her sharp. 

_It’s our wedding night,_ Will thought as they were dragged apart. For now, he quieted his anger. Let them be parted. Let them try. Will would find Elizabeth unless she found him first, always and forever _ad infinitum_ , understood? There wasn’t a moment he doubted that, not even while looking Davey Jones in the eye.

**•**

An eternity later, while she swam in his vision and screamed like he had never heard and never wanted to hear again, screamed for him as monsters encroached on all sides, Will remembered.

_How far are you willing to go to save her?_

_I’d die for her._

He was a man of his word.

**•**

There was to be a rebirth. The _Dutchman_ must have a captain, and his chest was hollowed out to make room for all that would entail. He would be the decider of fate, the lord of every ocean, the terror of good sailors and bad pirates alike. All was yet to come, and he was ready for it, but for the moment Will was happy to keep drifting on a twilight sea with Elizabeth at his side. Here they were children again, sailors of a great nebulous ocean in a place that was as real to Will as it was unreachable to mortals.

**•**

A wedding night at last. Had they been visited by the gods? Blessed with milk and honey? Everything was amber, was body heat, ringing laughter and shouts of praise. There was no creature that had ever lived that matched her majesty, her sun-stained beauty, brutal and free. Aphrodite, born of sea-foam. Helen of Sparta, for whom were launched a thousand ships. 

A different man might say more, but Will still liked to think he was good. They moved in worship, in prayer, until it was time. The goodbye that followed was unspeakable, and Will returned to his ship wholly changed. 

**•**

He thought of her every day for ten years. 

**•**

Elizabeth, with more freckles and lines, as beautiful as the first moment he met her. Their son, a treasure that Will knew he would kill for. On the morn he was obliged to return to the _Dutchman_ , but Will decided he wasn't obliged to stay. 

It was her, always and forever, _ad infinitum_. Understood?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reviews feed the writer!
> 
> p.s. if "always and forever ad infinitum" drove you crazy don't worry!!! it's meant to be redundant!!!


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